Freethinkers of Portland State University

Upcoming Event: Dr. Peter Boghossian

Freethinkers of PSU — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:57:14 +0000

Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and other delusions:

Just Say No!

January 27, 7:00 pm

Portland State University’s Hoffman Hall

This talk is free and open to the public.

About the lecture:

Dr. Boghossian will argue that faith is not a reliable process to guide one to the truth. He will explore problems with faith-based processes of reasoning, and also discuss practical strategies for engaging people of faith.

Dr. Boghossian is a faculty member in the Portland State University Department of Philosophy and an affiliate research assistant professor at Oregon Health Sciences University. His primary research areas are critical thinking and moral reasoning. He has published extensively in academic and professional journals, including Journal of the Philosophy of Education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Informal Logic and Teaching Philosophy.

Freethinkers of PSU additional notes:

Freethinkers of PSU is excited to use this lecture as an opportunity for a meeting of minds. If you disagree with Dr. Boghossian’s premises, we encourage you to come to the lecture, and ask him questions about his presentation.

For any further questions, please contact Freethinkers of PSU at athag@pdx.edu.

2nd Annual Atheist Christmas Party!

Freethinkers of PSU — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:58:02 +0000

Come join us for godless holiday cheer!

Our second annual Atheist Christmas Party will be held this Saturday December 3 from 6:30-9:30 in the Parkway North room, SMSU 101. We will be celebrating the holiday with a potluck style dinner*, a special screening of Christmas With a Capital C (with MST3K/RiffTrax style commentary encouraged, of course), and more!

What better way to kick off the holiday season than by celebrating Christmas with your favorite skeptic, secular humanist, atheist, agnostic and generalized heretic fellow PSU students?

*Bringing food items for the potluck is optional, but if you can’t bring something, come anyway! Please feel free to email us to sign up for bringing dishes.

Sell Your Soul for a Cookie!

Freethinkers of PSU — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:44:21 +0000

Last week, on Halloween day, we held a bake sale between Smith & Neuberger. Except, we didn’t actually sell anything. Well, not for money, or anything real or tangible, that is. We sold baked goods in exchange for people’s souls, which is to say that we gave food away. Of course, souls are not real, which is one of the core points of this event. We even had (just for fun, of course) soul transaction contracts with pseudo-blood writing utensils (red Sharpies) for people to fill out and take home, if desired. As expected, some of our customers were a bit weirded out by the concept of selling their soul, but most fount the concept to be quite clever. For the most part, those who were not entirely comfortable relinquishing their immortal soul in exchange for delightful noms found alternative means to enjoy our baked goods, such as selling one of their cat’s spare souls or selling the soul of a classmate. We even got the soul of one of the squirrels in the park blocks.

(click on image to biggify and view the full picture)

Hungry college students were fed, many souls were collected, and every single one of the baked goods on display sold out. Good times were had by all! The day almost could not have been better.

Many thanks to all who baked (or bought) the cookies, cupcakes, and the delightful peanut butter and Special K bars for the sale! Also thanks to everyone who showed up to help run the table.

Interfaith Service Days

Freethinkers of PSU — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:24:04 +0000

Hello everyone!

As discussed in our meeting last Tuesday, we are involved in the president’s Interfaith Initiative Challenge. The nature of our involvement is to provide a voice for PSU’s secular students in a program that would seemingly (by its name alone) be exclusive from us. In addition, for some of our goals for this school year, we hope to both advance our community service efforts as well as improve communications and dialogue with the religious organizations on campus. This program would readily allow us to do both. As Obama stated in the introductory video to this program, ‘…an act of service can unite people of all faiths, or even no faith, around a common purpose f helping those in need.’

The first service day for this is Saturday October 22, and the signup sheet for those who are interested in participating can be found here. Remember, the deadline for registration is this coming Wednesday, October 12.

-Ben

The President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge

Freethinkers of PSU — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 08:34:09 +0000

The President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge is to advance “interfaith cooperation and community service in higher education”. On March 17, 2011, President Obama issued a challenge to college campuses, hoping to bring religious groups together to work on community projects. His reasoning is that many social issues are addressed by religious groups already – feeding the hungry, providing low-cost daycare, sheltering the homeless – and that combining efforts can only bring positive change. To his credit, President Obama used all-inclusive language, not leaving out the non-believers in our midst. The press release of the Interfaith Challenge, including video, can be found here, and the details of the challenge, including guidelines and program requirements, can be found here (.pdf).

At the end of April, the Student Activities and Leadership Programs (SALP) adviser for the religious, international, and language clubs on campus was given a packet of information about this challenge – about three weeks before the proposal was due. In that time, she teamed up with the Campus Minister and assembled a small group of members from the campus religious organizations, and they decided that they would like to proceed with the challenge; they prepared a plan and submitted it.

The PSU plan’s focus is on sustainability – economic, environmental, and social. With that in mind, the SALP leadership is hoping to piggyback on efforts by the Student Leaders for Service (SLS), who organize community service projects on campus – Viking Days, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Earth Day are all days that SLS plans activities for, and these are activities which the Interfaith organizers are hoping to join.

We can debate the merits and drawbacks of the President choosing to call upon faith-based organizations to do the work that the government arguably should be doing; however, my focus is on the formation and execution of the plan here on campus, as well as concerns I have about this initiative as it relates to PSU.

I got involved in this merely by chance. One morning early in Summer Term, I bumped into the Director of SALP in Smith near Starbucks. She gave me a heads-up that there was an interfaith group thing going on, and wanted to make sure that the non-religious didn’t get overlooked. A few emails later, and Ben and I were in her office learning more.

There was a pretty good cross-section of religious (and other miscellaneous) organization representatives in the first meeting. There were members from SLS; the Muslim Student Association; the Jewish Student Association; the UAE Student Group; the Society for Classical Languages, Literature and Culture; and an unaffiliated Buddhist student who has been involved with the running of the Quiet Meditation and Prayer Lounge. Two off-campus advisers for the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, the Campus Minister from the Spiritual Life Center, a representative from St. James Lutheran Church on the Park Blocks, and another representative from local churches were all in attendance – interestingly, no students from Christian groups were there at all.

Overall, while I would hesitate to say that the meeting was a waste of time, I am honestly not sure precisely what we accomplished. We are going to seek out no more than three individuals from each faith/tradition/whatever to be on the “board”; that is, organizing the Interfaith thingy — (temporarily) officially, “Interfaith Service Committee”. However, we want to cap the total at 20 individuals for these positions — I’m not sure how many faiths are represented on campus, but to gather up to three individuals from all of them seems like it would mean more than 20 representatives. From here, we’re going to work on marketing, work on social media, and work on getting the word out.

When Ben and I sat in the advisers office, getting a feel for what it was she was trying to do, we had a bit of a discussion about the word “spiritual” and how it theoretically applies to nonbelievers. I think she was hoping to get our tacit approval that the word is all-encompassing and doesn’t exclude us. While I don’t remember the conversation word-for-word, I think Ben and I were in agreement that it was a word that necessarily excludes us, because it’s relying on belief in the intangible that many of us just don’t have. While we were not willing to speak for all atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, humanists, skeptics, etc., I think it’s fair to say that a good portion of non-spiritual people would laugh at the contradiction. And I can’t help but reflect on this post by Ophelia Benson, back when this challenge was first laid out:

Well, just for one thing, it can’t be. An Interfaith Challenge offered by an Interfaith Office can’t be fully open to and inclusive of atheists. It rejects atheists in the very language it uses. We shouldn’t be pretending it doesn’t. We shouldn’t be pretending there is nothing exclusive or particularist or antisecular about faith-based offices and faith-based challenges in and from a branch of government. I don’t feel included in Obama’s challenge. On the contrary; I feel very pointedly and explicitly not included.

I highly recommend reading the full post – she’s far more eloquent than I am. In any case, I rather felt like that at the meeting: everyone was so careful to say “people of faith and no faith”, as explicitly and pointedly as they could. There was no outright hostility, but there was a definite feeling that I was an inconvenience. Especially since I kept bringing up issues they were hoping to gloss over, such as the idea of holding meetings in different places of worship being bandied about. Having had a fair deal of experience with churches, temples, and synagogues, I expressed my concern that there may be issues with etiquette, and I know for myself I would be uncomfortable meeting in these places to address on-campus programs. They’ll continue to be held in the Spiritual Life Center for now. Make of that what you will.

So! If you have any feedback, concerns you’d like me to bring up, or would like to get involved, let us know!

–Sam

Fall Term Meeting Schedule

Freethinkers of PSU — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:54:53 +0000

The first meeting of the Freethinkers of PSU is set for

October 4, 2pm to 4pm in Smith Center Student Union room 296.

The rest of the term is as follows – all meeting times are at 2pm:

Date	Room	Notes
10/4	Smith Memorial Student Union 296
10/11	Smith Memorial Student Union 294
10/18	Smith Memorial Student Union 294
10/25	Smith Memorial Student Union 294
11/01	Smith Memorial Student Union 294
11/08	Smith Memorial Student Union 047A	This is a conference room between the bowling alley and OIT, right next door to the Student Prayer center.
11/15	Smith Memorial Student Union 323	This room is tucked behind the elevators on the 3rd floor of Smith. We had many meetings there last year.
11/22	Smith Memorial Student Union 294
11/29	Smith Memorial Student Union 294

You can also look at the Smith Memorial Union floorplan map.

From Atheism to Catholicism….

Freethinkers of PSU — Thu, 12 May 2011 16:37:36 +0000

Here’s a link to the original blog entry and speech transcript that we discussed in this weeks meeting. [link]

We never got through the whole thing, for which I apologize, but we’ll continue with this discussion next week.

-Ben

Two New Events!

Freethinkers of PSU — Wed, 04 May 2011 06:31:54 +0000

First, celebrate the rapture… or rather, the rapture not happening! On Monday May 23 from 7:30-9:30 we will be having a post-rapture ‘hey look it didn’t happen!’ party at the bowling lanes in the Viking Gameroom in the basement of Smith Union. Come celebrate being alive and ‘left behind’… just like everyone else!

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UPDATE: This event has been canceled, but the Crislip lecture is very much on!

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Also later this month, the Freethinkers of PSU proudly welcome Dr. Mark Crislip in a special presentation on acupuncture. This lecture event will be held on Friday May 27 at 7:00PM in Smith Union room 236.

2011 NW Freethought Conference!

Freethinkers of PSU — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 18:48:58 +0000

Updated Schedule / Skeptics Links

Freethinkers of PSU — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:16:17 +0000

First, here is an updated schedule for Winter 2011:

Tuesday 1/4 4-6 SMU 294

Tuesday 1/11 4-6 SMU 294

Tuesday 1/18 4-6 SMU 294

Tuesday 1/25 4-6 SMU 294

Tuesday 2/1 4-6 SMU 294

Tuesday 2/8 4-6 SMU 294

Tuesday 2/15 4-6 SMU 323

Tuesday 2/22 4-6 SMU 323

Tuesday 3/1 4-6 SMU 323

Tuesday 3/8 4-6 SMU 294

Note that for weeks 7-9 we will be upstairs in room 323. All other meeting sites and times remain the same.

And now, as mentioned in one of our meetings earlier this term, here are some good links to websites and podcasts on skepticism:

Skeptics Guide to the Universe
Astronomy Cast
Skeptoid
Skeptic Zone
Skeptics with a K (via The Merseyside Skeptics Society)
Quack Cast
Righteous Indignation
Geologic Podcast